What External Mic Does Smosh Use?

Drew Palermo

Drew Palermo

Member
Looking to get an idea of a good external mic to use for sketches, mostly for indoors. Smosh is just an example that has good sound quality.

I'm looking to spend between $200-$300.
 
I can guarantee you you won't find their microphone in that price range. However you can still get some pretty cheap mics for that price if you don't mind syncing up video and audio in post.
 
Rode Mic works for any camera that has a mic jack. It's about $300.

Go to The tube tape website and look for the rode mic under audio equipment.
 
Can you give more detail on the actual application of said Mic? The reason I ask is that there are loads of microphones, each with a slightly differing purpose.

How many subjects does it need to record? Distance from the mic to the person? Noise level of the room (computers, furnace, is the room empty, has lots of furniture)? How is it being recorded (portable recorder? Computer?)? etc.

For example, an omni-directional condenser might just be the right choice, but it may be better to go cheaper on the mic and spend the balance on treating the room with audio foam to dump the echo a bit. Or if you don't give two s***s about the mic being seen in the frame, a Shure SM58 Dynamic Mic being held by the speaker "interview style" will do the job just fine. Or even further to that, lapel mics might be the right choice but will limit the movement of the user.
 
Tarmack said:
Can you give more detail on the actual application of said Mic? The reason I ask is that there are loads of microphones, each with a slightly differing purpose.

How many subjects does it need to record? Distance from the mic to the person? Noise level of the room (computers, furnace, is the room empty, has lots of furniture)? How is it being recorded (portable recorder? Computer?)? etc.

For example, an omni-directional condenser might just be the right choice, but it may be better to go cheaper on the mic and spend the balance on treating the room with audio foam to dump the echo a bit. Or if you don't give two s***s about the mic being seen in the frame, a Shure SM58 Dynamic Mic being held by the speaker "interview style" will do the job just fine. Or even further to that, lapel mics might be the right choice but will limit the movement of the user.
Click to expand...

I guess I'm willing to compromise on the mic quality for good lighting equipment for the room (rather than foam to kill the echo). I'm using the Panasonic GH2 and so far it's done really poor indoors when filming (low light environments). It's going to be mostly me speaking, sometimes I might have another person say a couple words. More so I'd really like to do videos like JabooodyDubs or narrations, so I could speak directly in the mic for those instances.

I could even go cheaper than $200 if I find a mic test on youtube that picks up the speaker well at least 6-8 feet away. In the end I'm pretty flexible about the choices except not having a mic that's "interview style". Heck, I'm even for videos with almost no words spoken like the viral "How Animals Eat Their Food".

Still doing research on some of the aspects of these mics, like mono vs stereo, not sure if mono is that big a deal, but I'd rather just get something soon than getting caught up in the technicals since minute differences shouldn't matter as much in the end as long as the video content/quality is up there.

Here's a sketch I'd like to know what mic they're using:
youtube.com/watch?v=eRtkQ3fJS2g

This guy's audio quality seems to be a bit more echoy/spacey, but I'm willing to settle for that type of subtle echo. I read that he's using a Rode Videomic.:
youtube.com/watch?v=QPhFz6EI4EM

Later on if the subs go up and income goes up I can justify investing in something to match the quality of Smosh audio
 
k. The reason I ask is that short of buying a shotgun mic pointed directly at the speaker, as soon as you get more than 10-12 inches away from the speaker, the room echo becomes much much more noticable. This is not a mic quality issue, but rather a room quality issue. The more furniture in the room, the less direct echo will happen but it will still be noticable. Shotgun Mics are unidirectional, but from a very narrow range, so if pointed properly, kill a good amount of sidebar noise and echo. The last thing you want is an omni-directional mic in an untreated room.

The problem with Shotgun mics though is that they're not cheap.Rode does make some decent ones. Another problem with shotgun mics is recording multiple people not standing side by side.
 
I knew my brother had a microphone me and him used to record our instruments with, and today he told me it's a Shure SM57 cardioid mic. It's on Amazon for $99... Couldn't I just use that for an external mic with my camera? At the 7 minute mark in this video the guy speaks into the SM57 and it sounds good: youtube.com/watch?v=bYpONrVN5EA

I guess I'd have to experiment with it...
 
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